Funfetti Sugar Scrub

4 / 23 / 164 / 26 / 16

Well, I’m excited to say that we’ve officially made it a full 3 months home from the NICU without baby bubba getting sick! According to our nurses, the first 3 months {and especially the first 4 – 6 weeks} are the most critical as far as keeping little NICU babes healthy and bug-free, and I’m so glad we were successful. During those first 6 weeks, we really avoided taking Sam to public places as much as possible, and though we’ve loosened up quite a bit since then, we’re still all about the hand washing in this house. It’s such an easy thing to do and since it’s the best way to keep germs at bay, we’re going to keep on it. After all, we don’t want baby bubba getting sick now any more than we did in the first 3 months – having a sick baby is awful!

Christmas Tree Play Dough and Cookie Cutter Gifts

12 / 8 / 1412 / 13 / 14

It’s very likely that our friends may soon disown us for constantly gifting them with play dough… And until then, we’ll probably just continue coming up with clever ways to present it and give it anyways {sorry, friends}. ☺

Easy Kid-Made Sugar Scrub

8 / 15 / 1410 / 8 / 14

Ever since attending their launch party for Fun, Miss G has absolutely loved visiting Lush, so there was no walking by when we spent a day on Robson Street a few weeks ago. The moment she got wind of the store’s signature scent, her eyes lit up and she was asking to go in {twist my rubber arm}. As always, the ladies working there were lovely and pampered us with all sorts of fun product demonstrations, our favourite of which was a luxurious lemony body scrub that left our hands feeling soft and smelling delicious.

Build a Sandcastle Play Dough Kits

6 / 13 / 1411 / 11 / 14

It’s no secret that Miss G and I like to create and give little homemade gifts. I’ve always loved giving gifts and it’s important to me that Gracen sees that there’s just as much joy {if not more} in giving as there is in receiving, even if the gifts are tiny and made by hand. I think ‘happy summer’ gifts like these also help her prepare for significant transitions – in this case, saying goodbye to her friends and home here in Kuwait and heading back to Canada for the summer.

Gingerbread People Play Dough and Cookie Cutter Gifts

12 / 18 / 1312 / 24 / 13

I truly love giving gifts and it seems as though Gracen feels the same way. Whether it is homemade ribbon wands or jars of pink sparkly slime for her ballet buddies, lavender rosemary bath fizzies or homemade cleaners for her grandmas, or fun play kits for her friends’ birthdays (we’ve done a craft kit, play dough kit, and a sensory play kit), she is genuinely tickled pink when she gets the opportunity to create something and give it to someone special.

Build A Snowman Play Dough Kits

12 / 15 / 1311 / 25 / 14

With our last crafting class of the year coming up in just a few short days, Miss G and I wanted to prepare some simple gifts to share with the little friends she’s made at Bright Minds over the last few months. We adore play dough and had so much fun with our larger scale play dough snowman building activity that we decided to make miniature versions in easy to pack cases – everything needed to build play dough snowmen in small locking lid containers for some holiday fun on the go {or at home, really}.

First, we gathered up our materials… A double batch of our yummy-smelling vanilla mint play dough, awesome divided locking lid containers, beads, buttons, googly eyes, orange matchsticks, small twigs, and miniature scarves cut from inexpensive felt.

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We found our locking divided containers at City Star here in Kuwait, but these Sistema Klip It Split Food Containers on Amazon look similar. I love them because they’re small, easy for little ones to seal and unseal, and perfect for packing in a purse, diaper bag, or carry-on. Plus, they keep the play dough and the ‘building accessories’ {as Miss G calls them} separate, which I like too.

To get started, I added a big ball of vanilla mint play dough to one compartment of each container.

Then Gracen added the accessories to the other. To keep things uniform, we came up with a ‘recipe’ of what should be added to each container (2 googly eyes, 2 matchstick carrot noses, 2 twig arms, 5 beads, 5 buttons, and 1 felt scarf), which turned out to be great counting practice for Miss G.

This is how our kits looked when we were done with them.

Afterwards, Gracen matched up the lids, locked them on, and I used a regular glue stick to adhere some very basic labels I made and printed to fit our containers. And that was it – simple but cute gifts for our friends to enjoy over the holidays, be it at home, on an airplane, and while waiting in restaurants and doctors’ offices. I am so keeping one of these to bring along on our upcoming trip to Germany. In fact, I’m thinking I may create a couple of other little ‘play on-the-go’ kits too! ☺

Of course the one I tucked away for our trip didn’t remain a secret for long…

In fact, Grae’s already had several play dough snowman building sessions with her little kit.

Now let’s just hope the excitement continues until Christmas break rolls around and we board that plane!

Fingers crossed!

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Father’s Day Interview and Portrait {a sweet and simple gift for Papa}

6 / 16 / 136 / 14 / 14

I’ve always adored handmade gifts, especially when they’re from munchkins, so this year Gracen and I created something simple but from-the-heart for Bradley – a Father’s Day interview and portrait.

We started with an interview all about her Papa. I’ve seen a ton of these on Pinterest and we did something similar when she turned 2, so I just made up a bunch of sentence starters, read them aloud to her, and she finished them off. I was actually a little surprised as I wasn’t sure if she’d fully understand how to finish off sentences like this, but it was no problem at all. Some of her answers – like the fact that Brad likes to wear leggings and ‘makes her food….cereal mostly!’ cracked me right up!

To jazz things up a little, I gathered some inspiration for Daffodil Design and created a couple of mini buntings using scrapbook paper and baker’s twine.

While I did that, Miss G worked on a drawing of Bradley. It was her idea to retrieve this picture from her room since he was at work and she couldn’t look at him in person.

To put everything together, I simply tacked the buntings onto the interview and portrait papers with a teensy amount of tape, carefully outlined her portrait with black felt, then popped them into frames.

Here are the finished products!

Pretty cute, right? My favourite part is that she was just tickled pink about the way Papa’s shoes had turned out… Proud as a peacock.

Want to create your own but not have to start from scratch?

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All About My Papa | All About My Daddy

My Papa’s Portrait | My Daddy’s Portrait

♥

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Treats for Dad Basket {A Quick and Easy Father’s Day Gift}

6 / 15 / 136 / 22 / 13

Brad and I really don’t do big gifts for one another and haven’t for years (so imagine my surprise when a brand new MacBook Pro was delivered to our door in time for my birthday last year!), but I do enjoy putting together little non-gifty things to make celebrations a tiny bit more special. This year, besides Gracen’s sweet little interview and drawing and the annual daddy-daughter photo book I make for Brad (which sadly is still in progress), Miss G and I decided to put together a basket of some of Brad’s very favourite treats.

Brad is a true snacker, so loading up a big basket full of goodies he loves was not hard to do. Miss G and I made a list beforehand, then headed to the market in search of our items. Included was chips (Gracen chose pop chips), blue corn and flax tortillas with tomatillo salsa, pistachio nuts, roasted cashews, hot and sweet beef jerky, a dark chocolate bar, dark chocolate-covered goji berries, a big bottle of limonata, and a couple of organic sodas.

To personalize it just a little, we printed off these Father’s Day tags from Paper & Stitch, cut them out, and attached them to the different goodies using a glue stick. In our case, I really should have taken the time to make similar tags that used ‘Papa’ instead of dad, but this time around, this was just easier.